Commodus

by Simon Turney

  The pits in the ground opened up in all four enclosures and suddenly herds of animals were running up onto the sand in panic: goats, deer and sheep. As soon as half a dozen animals were released into each arc, the doors shut down again and the predators began to move, racing for the ready meat that ran, panicked and startled, among them.

  Then Commodus also started to run.

  If ever there was a more impressive show of speed, strength and skill, I have yet to hear of it. The emperor moved like a racer at the games, slowing as he reached the first of those stooks of javelins. He selected one and lifted it. Standing at the edge of the rail, a hundred paces from where the wolf was busy cornering a sheep, he settled into position, pulling back his arm, javelin angled just right, a Greek-style throwing strap in evidence.

  He adjusted, shifted a foot, breathed quietly . . .

  And threw the missile.

  It sailed out silently across the gap and, to the astonishment and delight of the crowd, struck the wolf in the back even as the frenzied beast lunged for the sheep. The weapon pinned it to the sand and it lay there, thrashing and howling, dark blood gushing out onto the arena floor. The sheep scurried away from the transfixed predator and milled in confusion and panic with its herd at the far end.

  Commodus turned and essayed a quick bow to the people, which elicited a fresh roar from them all, and then he was running again. Clearly, he was gaining in confidence as he moved, for he entered the quarter with the leopard and grasped a javelin from the next stack, pivoting, turning, and hurling the thing without taking time to prepare and sight. Admittedly, the beast was closer to him than the wolf had been, but the javelin flew true, smashing into the thing’s hindquarters and sending it skittering across the sand to lie crippled and in agony.

  The crowd erupted like a tidal wave of humanity. Men hurtled from their seats to their feet, cheering and waving their arms at this display of prowess. But the emperor wasn’t done yet. He approached the lion enclosure. This time he was too late to save the other animals, and a goat was already being devoured. The lion lay still, tearing at the carcass. The emperor stood in frustration for a short while. Killing a stationary animal was not the display he had in mind, but time wore on and the animal was happy to lie still and consume its kill. The crowd started to become restive. They had been treated, and they wanted more. With a clear sigh of regret over the ease of the kill, Commodus hefted the next javelin. In order to make it somewhat more skilful, he spun a full circle before he let go. The weapon hit the lion square on, and he was moving again even as the crowd roared once more.

  He reached the bear. It had slain two animals already, but was more intent on the killing than the eating, enraged and angry. It hurtled around the sand, howling, chasing the other prey. Commodus selected a javelin and aimed.

  He threw. The beast moved at the last moment, and it is to Commodus’ credit that the weapon hit the bear at all. It tore a piece of flesh from the ursine monster in its passage and the bear suddenly registered the new threat. It spun and dropped to all fours, thundering towards its aggressor. The crowd fell into an awed silence. The animal was a large example and as it closed on that temporary wooden walkway that ran around the edge, it occurred to everyone that the beast might just be able to reach the emperor.

  Commodus had perhaps realised the same, for he grasped a second javelin and threw it hurriedly.

  This one struck the bear in its shoulder, throwing it off to one side, though the wound was far from fatal and a moment later it had brushed off the weapon and was rearing up, closing on the walkway. Even I felt the danger, then. The walkway was fifteen feet above the sand. The bear was perhaps twelve feet tall, but its reaching paws would easily be able to touch the timber.

  Commodus danced to the side as a paw swung and tore through wooden planks and joists as though they were made of papyrus. I swallowed nervously. The emperor grabbed a javelin just before another powerful paw swept through the wood at the base of the stack and sent them scattering all over the place. Half the stack fell down onto the sand, the others forming a dangerous hazard underfoot on the walkway.

  This was Commodus’ opportunity to escape. He could run past the dividing timber wall to another quarter. He did not. He hefted his javelin as though it were a stabbing spear. I felt my pulse quicken, my blood chill. This was true danger. A bear will not hold back where a gladiator might. Commodus danced past the bear once more. The paw struck the pot with the glowing pitch in it now, and the liquid slopped out onto the wood, immediately setting fire to the walkway.

  The bear thrashed and tore at the timbers, gradually shredding its way through.

  Commodus found his optimal place and prepared. The beast closed, a paw raised to smash through the wood at the emperor’s feet.

  The glorious Hercules of the arena jabbed out with the javelin, punching it into the animal’s eye. The bear howled and dropped back, half-blinded and in rage-filled agony. Commodus was not about to allow it time to recover. Steadying himself and changing his grip, he threw the weapon, which slammed into the bear’s neck so hard it emerged from the far side amid a torrent of blood.

  The bear fell.

  It spent a long time dying on the arena floor, and Commodus, perhaps honouring the power of the beast, retrieved another two javelins and struck it well twice more, finishing it off and putting it out of its pain.

  The crowd went wild.

  I thought that anything he might do after that would be an anticlimax, but I was wrong. Slaves appeared with buckets of water, extinguishing the fire on the walkway, and others with extra timbers that they proceeded to use to shore up the damaged sections. The herds were shifted from the arena and the dividing walls swiftly taken down. The corpses were removed and the sand raked over. All this took less than a quarter of an hour, during which a girl entered the arena with a cup of wine, handing it reverentially to the emperor, who quaffed it thirstily, then handed it back with a grin. The crowd erupted again, wishing him long life, and chanting the new slogan that filled Rome.

  Herculi Commodiano.

  It would be difficult to deny that he was their golden emperor that day, but what came next only added to his legend. More beasts were released once everything was ready. This time it became a free-for-all, and every animal in that arena was a killer in its own right. Dozens of them, each more fierce than the last. Needless to say, fights erupted between the animals instantly, and the crowd bayed hungrily. Then the emperor began his next display. Sweeping up the bow with which he had first arrived, he stretched and prepared and then, taking a deep breath, started to run. As he passed the first container of pitch, he produced an arrow from his quiver, dipped it in the flames and nocked it without slowing his pace. The missiles must have been treated with flammable material for the arrow ignited easily. He released the string and the arrow thrummed through the air, his aim true, striking a tiger in the neck. He never slowed. On he went, pulling out another arrow and igniting it as he passed the next bowl, nocking it, drawing back and loosing even as he pelted along the timbers. It struck some strange, vicious-looking thing in the rump and made it roar in pain and shock and turn from its fight. On he ran. I watched him with the same awe as the rest of the crowd. He repeated the process over and over, never once slowing his pace, circling the arena more than twice, repeatedly loosing flaming arrows until his quiver was empty. In all that time, with perhaps twenty arrows, I saw him miss only four times. Three of his shots killed on impact. I had not even known he could handle a bow, and I marvelled. It must have been one of the skills he had learned from his cadre of gladiator instructors.

  The bestiarii arrived then, emerging through the Gate of Life and making for the numerous wild predators on the sand. Perhaps some of the roar of adulation from the crowd was for these professional hunters, but I suspect the large part of it was for the incredible prowess displayed by the Herculean emperor before them.

  An hour lat
er, the emperor was back in his white and gold chiton, bathed and brushed, clean and relaxed as he entered the pulvinar. We watched the rest of the day’s events together and for the first time that year I was able to laud him and his achievements and support him without a hint of underlying regret or falsehood. I was proud of my golden prince.

  The games went on, day after day, and each time Commodus involved himself in some way. Sometimes he hunted beasts with the others on the sand. Sometimes he armed himself as a gladiator and took to the sand with other professional killers.

  With the rest of the crowd, I watched, heart in throat, as the emperor deftly leapt from side to side, barefoot in the bloodied sand, shield on one arm, gleaming blade in the other. I held my breath as a trident tore three jagged rents in the coloured surface of his shield, mangled the bronze strip on the edge and then clanged off that smooth, eerie helmet.

  But Commodus the Champion of Secutors had trained with the best the empire had to offer in that private arena on the Via Appia, and in other venues thereafter. A quick pivot on one greaved leg and his blade came up, neatly hacking the trident in half and leaving the retiarius poorly armed. The shocked man tried to back away, but Commodus’ questing foot found the man’s net and stamped down, pinning it to the sand. Off balance, the net man fell and the emperor’s blade was at his neck in a heartbeat, hovering over the kill-point. Then it was withdrawn and Commodus tore the helm off and cast it down to the ground, grinning and complimenting his opponent before reaching down to give him a hand up to the roared delight of the crowd.

  He was never truly in danger with the men he fought, though. The gladiators would have been instructed not to inflict harm upon the imperial person, but to test his ability. There were a few inevitable grazes and small cuts, of course, but nothing crippling or life-threatening. Equally, Commodus delivered a few wounds, but stopped short of killing his opponents. These were contests of skill, after all, not executions. Listen to me so calmly describing damage to the imperial person. How inured to such dangerous excess I was becoming.

  I watched for days and could not help but be impressed. And when he was observing and not taking part, we were seated together in the pulvinar.

  Things were almost back to normal. He had even lost that hint of suspicion, for the most part, when he looked at me, though there was something undefinable still about his eyes. I could not say what it was, but it still made me a little uneasy, though it was not just there for me, it was there even as he drank in the adulation of his public.

  I deliberately ignored it. Whatever it was, it was not specifically aimed at me, and so I concentrated on other matters. The wound was almost closed now, and I had to bind it and keep it safe.

  Then, one night, Commodus came to my bed.

  ‘I apologise,’ he said quietly, ‘I have not had time to bathe. I will smell of sweat.’

  You smell of death and bloodshed, was what danced through my mind, though I simply smiled and forced that down as I drank in the sight of the gladiator lord of Rome.

  ‘You have astounded everyone. No one can doubt your power, now.’

  He nodded. His smile was easy, though I still could not help but note that odd something shadowed in the back of his eyes.

  ‘Let me show you something about power,’ he said, oddly, then rolled on top of me, and kissed me. My breath caught in my throat as I took in the great demigod above me.

  My Hercules had returned.

  XXV

  BLACK WITH SORROW, CRIMSON WITH RAGE

  Rome, 31 December ad 192

  Life’s joys are fleeting.

  The wound that had existed in our relationship for a year or more had scabbed over and, foolishly, I took that for fully healed. But a scabbed wound is merely in the process of healing. That scab needs time to repair the damage and knit the flesh together. To pick at it merely opens the wound again, sometimes worse than before.

  At the closing festival of that last dreadful year I learned as much, to my peril.

  I was so overjoyed to have my golden prince back that I did not look closely enough. I had ignored that shadow in his eyes, despite a lifetime of watching for such things, focused solely on what affected me directly. I saw my gleaming Hercules, who was beloved of Rome, and I was so grateful that he was loved, and that he smiled at me, and that he slept in my bed, and that we were together once more, that I continued to ignore that something.

  Foolish.

  How many times in our lives had I watched him pull on a mask to cover his hollow pain? It had happened every time I had not been there to help repair his melancholia, every time he had dealt with his pain on his own. When I had been there to pick him up, shoulder his burden and lift his spirits into the light, I had managed to bring him back. When I had not, he had suffered long and hard through his pain, donning a visage of calm and contentment while churning like a dark sea within.

  For much of a year he had been playing that old masked role without me realising, for we had been so separated by distrust and sadness. So intent was I in healing the rift that I had not noticed what was happening on the far side of it. And then, when I thought it healed, I was so beside myself with relief that I continued blindly failing to realise the danger.

  Commodus was in the darkest of places.

  I realised only when it was too late. It was the eve of the festival of Janus that would usher in the new year and the whole city – the whole empire – was preparing to celebrate one of the most important festivals of the calendar. I myself, a smile plastered across my unseeing face, was contemplating what joys were to come and whether the banquet that loomed on the morrow could be engineered to somehow repair relations with the senate. See how already I was thinking of how to push for change, so blind was I to the danger of the still-healing wound.

  I stood in my room, looking back and forth between two stola and palla combinations that lay stretched out on the bed, trying to decide which would look best for the next morning.

  The door opened and the emperor walked in. He was unaccompanied, the guards remaining at the outer door of the apartments, all slaves and functionaries busy elsewhere. I turned, smiling, happy, and my heart skipped a beat at what I saw.

  Commodus had been crying. Of that I was sure. And because of those red-rimmed eyes, the mask he had been wearing all year had slipped. I could see the chaotic darkness behind it in his tortured eyes. That shadow had consumed his blue gaze altogether.

  ‘Oh, my love,’ I breathed and rushed over, holding him.

  He stood still, wrapped in my embrace.

  ‘I cannot die, Marcia.’

  It seemed such an odd thing to say that I let out a tiny chuckle and released him, stepping back. ‘Everyone dies eventually.’

  He shook his head. ‘As a boy I slammed my head against the wall, trying to dash out my brains. Did you know that?’

  Had he? I had seen his torn, clumped scalp, but never something like that. I felt sick as he went on.

  ‘I rode into battle against the Marcomanni. Father forbade me from taking an active part, but I did. I fought like a lion. I was in the midst of a hundred men who wanted nothing more than to separate my head from my shoulders, yet it was I who came home with a king’s skull on my saddle.’

  I shivered as he grasped me by the shoulders.

  ‘I have lived amid a plague that killed two thousand a day. A plague that killed my uncle. That probably weakened or even killed my father in the end. Nothing. At the villa of the Quintilii I fought with sharp blades against trained killers. I gave the order not to hold back, and I don’t believe they did. But I walked away untouched.’

  Horror and realisation settled into me.

  ‘The Plebeian Games . . .’ I whispered.

  He nodded. ‘I fought men and beasts, and I never once told them to give less than their all. I dared the gods to take me, but they will not. I cannot die.’
r />   I stared. ‘You want to?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he admitted quietly, then sat on the edge of the bed amid my neatly laid out clothes. ‘Sometimes it seems the only answer. Everyone I love is dead.’

  Everyone? That should have warned me if nothing else, but I was focused on the immediate problem now. I needed to pull him out of this, and fast. This was dangerous ground.

  ‘Put aside such thoughts, my love. It is festival time. A time for joy and feasts. Tomorrow will be the great banquet in honour of the new consuls. Help me choose my outfit. Or would you rather I came as Minerva? Or an Amazon?’

  He shook his head, unwavering from his darkness. ‘I will not be here tonight. I am going away for the evening.’

  I frowned, worry settling into me. ‘Going where?’

  ‘To the barracks of my gladiators. I will sleep among their number.’

  ‘Gladiators? Why?’

  ‘Because I have need of them on the morrow. I shall leave my lictors in the palace. There is no place for them in what I must do. This will be achieved through blood rather than law.’

  A chill ran through me. ‘What must you do? What do you plan?’

  ‘I shall attend the banquet for the two new consuls.’

  ‘Of course. And my outfit—’

  He shook his head, cutting me off. ‘I will not be going there from the palace as an emperor or as a god. I shall be going there from the gladiator barracks as a killer. And I shall bring my fellow killers with me. I have one last show to put on during the banquet.’

  I felt an odd tinge of relief. ‘The consuls will like that. You do Clarus and Falco unexpected honour by selecting them for the consulate, and to put on a show for them . . .’ Clarus and Falco had, after all, been two of his most outspoken critics. The fact that he had made them consul at all had surprised me.

  ‘You misunderstand, Marcia. They are part of the show. The show is for the other senators present.’